Re: Warning

Honestly, I think that would only delay deployment until they issue the hard block. All it would gain them would be the satisfaction of saying "we gave you six months of on-screen warnings that your certs needed to be fixed," but in a certain sense, they've already been warning for a year.

Re: Warp is not a linear scale

It's Treknology. Meaning, it's whatever scale the writers need for the plot point this week. So I won't fault the author for making it mean what he needs it to mean in this article.

I love Star Trek as much as the next geek, but I do recognize it's limitations. I mean, do you REALLY think humans would ever encounter what is effectively a dead world with far more advanced technology that is easily readable (For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky, Spock's Brain) and not make a copy before running off? Or fail to record all of Earth's History (City on the Edge of Forever)? Or, given a transporter accident that regresses your physical age to 12-14 (Next Gen, don't recall title), not work with that accident to come up with a way to regress your physical age to 21-25? And let's not even get started on how badly they mangled the timeline with Enterprise.

Re: This is not about the video.

Minor nit: not a media created theory. This one comes straight from the loser in the White House on my side of the pond. The media are just enablers and supporters of the theory.

Re: Fanatics

Or maybe he already knows it and its you who have your head stuck so far up your arse you can't see it.

By your own definitions, there was a point at which Europe was woefully behind the Muslim world in technology. The only advantage Europe had over the rest of the world was Christianity. In fact, existing trade, knowledge, and political alliances were advantages for the Muslim world over the Christian one. Yet now we are light years ahead, plus we seem to have settled down into at least non-violent if not peaceful coexistence.

Re: Last week...

Last time I checked, there wasn't a single Christian Pastor/Minister/Bishop etc. who would publicly proclaim a Christian had a RELIGIOUS right to do those things. In fact, they'd pretty much tell the heathen he was going straight to Hell if he didn't repent.

Re: "oh, we have secure email"

After that you went through with having your loan with them anyway?!?!?!???

I realize you probably had a significant chunk of time already invested with them, but I think I would have just walked away at that point. If they were that stupid with your application, what makes you think any of their other processes are better? Doubly true if they are just an originator who are going to resell your mortgage anyway, which unfortunately still seems to be the standard model even after the banking collapse.

Re: The more things change...

Yep. A wise man once said 'Security is not a state, it is a process.'

Re: Test Your Model

Minor nit:

When you can "predict" backwards with an acceptable degree of accuracy without applying epicycles or dragon migration trails, you then...

Re: positive-feedbackitis

It's actually worse than that. The models use formulas that don't have have corresponding real world phenomena because using those formulas makes the data sort of work, where as using the formula you'd get from the real world phenomena produces an obviously bad result. A mathematician friend of mine who works in the field doesn't see a problem with this approach as long as the model produces reasonably accurate predictive results. I do because it indicates that while we may have maths that are helpful, we understand nothing about the way the system really works. To me it's the ancient Greeks being able to chart where the planets would be even though they put the Earth at the center of the universe and thought heavy objects fell faster than light ones. I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it if the people behind the models would admit as much and work at getting a better understanding of the real physics involved rather than heading off on a political jihad.

Re: Prof is right?

I think the one weakness in both stories is:

Do we have the original infection virus? And how does it change over time?

At some point, even if you're a patriotic American, you have to assume the Iranians will realize something is happening to their network and go looking for it. At that point they WILL be able to capture a sample of it for analysis, re-engineer part of it, and fire it back at you. When they fire it back, do they:

a) have the resources to make it narrowly targeted like the initial release

b) care whether or not it is narrowly targeted

If the answers to either of those is 'no' then an internet vector is a logical choice for the re-engineered malware.

Re: @Tom 13 It DOES necessarily follow that massive amounts need to be extracted.

Nobody but you counts nuclear as renewable. "Renewable" has always meant something you manufacture once, after which it continues non-polluting (on ALL counts) energy. It's actually one of the problems I have with "renewable energy" as a concept - the definition has always been based on unicorn fart philosophy - as in, if I had a unicorn fart, I could harness it to produce clean energy.

Nuclear should be a part of our overall energy strategy, particularly breeder plants. That doesn't mean we get to pretend they are "renewable clean." There are problems with it that need to be addressed, just like there are problems with oil, gas, geothermal, and wind. Page was obviously working within the renewable unicorn fart dream reference.

Re: otoh, if it is a real and non fronting company...

Depends on when they knew about it. And frankly, if they only discovered they'd been breached after the Pastebin drop, that worries me even more.

Re: Funny how those who moan about Apple going for bans

You need to look up "schadenfreude." You might also find it helpful to talk to your therapist about projection issues.

It DOES necessarily follow that massive amounts need to be extracted.

I learned it as the First Law of Thermodynamics. And even "deniers" don't claim we don't use "massive amounts of energy."

The question is, "what effect if any does the extraction have on the environment."

Re: just forcing everyone into pay-TV

Urban areas were the first to move to cable because broadcast was shit for reception. Too many possibilities for too much steel between you and the source, or other interference.

Re: Oracle permanently damaged HP's HP-UX market.

This is the key statement courts are going to have to deal with eventually. Oracle aren't the first, and they won't be the last. MS did it to Netscape.* And I'm sure it happened before that as well. There are certain instances where what ought to be a symbiotic relationship between companies can be manipulated by one and only one of the partners to its advantage. And once the action is done, the other partner can't recover because in the two to three years it takes the case to move through the court system, the software market has moved through two to six generations of hardware and software.

*Whether or not you think Netscape was a GOOD implementation of wc3 standards or not, it was the dominant player until MS illegally leveraged their market, even if the courts couldn't quite understand the issue.

Re: was not a fan of the GOP side of the force.

True. But I'm pretty sure he'd HATE the crap in this alleged "scientific study" even more. And for precisely the reasons outlined above.

@Psyx

Leave the troll alone. He's just found a new term and he doesn't know what it means so it must be evil. Progressives are like that.

I'm not a libertarian myself, but I know what the term means and I respect their logical faculties.

Re: reasons for doubting the statistics.

If the questions are garbage, the statistics are irrelevant. I just read the survey, and the questions are garbage. The head shrinkers had an axe to grind, so the survey will produce that result.

Re: This could've been an interesting take on the story...

Wowsers! I love this one:

7. The Iraq War in 2003 was launched for reasons other than to remove WMD from Iraq

1 S Agree 2 Agree 3 Disagree 4 S Disagree

Unlike most El Reg Posters, I support the 2003 Iraqi invasion, and even I'd Strongly agree with that statement. Saying anything else would be to focus on a single sentence out of 100s from the UN speech. Certainly doesn't make me a conspiracy theorist.

Re: @AlbertH

I wouldn't say there is ZERO innovation at Apple. They do innovate, just not as much as they market themselves to. They did pretty much create the smart phone market (not the mobile phone, just the smart phone). But that doesn't mean they get to keep it all to themselves.

On the court case: 1) It isn't over. It will be appealed, I 70% expect all the way to SCOTUS. 2) I don't think it was Mom and Apple Pie vs slanty-eyed foreigners. I think it was: non-taxable money vs taxable money. The case was tried in California, where the government is greedy for money, and the local fools don't realize none of the Apple money will ever make it home to be taxed in the first place.

Re: @DougS

1) 70% is sufficient for regulation.

2) I think I can argue that its the Apps market that makes the smart phone/tablet markets valuable, therefore they constitute a relevant market. More importantly are in the early growth part of their curve. The PC curve was probably farther along than tablets, which makes anti-competitive behavior even more problematic.

3) Given 2 Apple is leveraging their legally held OS monopoly into the Apps market.

The essentials of the argument are the same. After that it all depends on whether or not you think the MS case was justly settled. On that count, while I believe MS rode roughshod over the law and the markets in the case, at the end of they day they did say one true thing in their defense: the way the government tried the case was more about putting the government in charge of MS OS development than it was about restoring balance to the market place. So on balance MS winning was less bad than the government winning. But it never leaves a good taste in the mouth when you are settling for the lesser of two evils.

Re: Should be easy to check..

It is, the FBI did, and they provided the answer.

But that won't stop a Birther from claiming The Big 0 was born in Kenya, and it won't stop this silliness either.

Re: Is this not merely yet more evidence to the effect

Yes.

The problem of course is that in the current situation, the rewrite would be done by the same people who gave us the current situation. Only this time, without the hinderence of historical precedents.

Re: F***

I doubt it. Frankly, it's the easiest way to get FB on a firm financial footing. Everything else is possible, but long odds. Long odds are even harder to beat as a publicly traded company than a private one.

Re: can partially compete w Google.

NOBODY can compete, even partially, with Google in the ad space.

Yes, they have potentially valuable information, but I have to concur with the previous poster, FB's best shot at making money is to figure out how to leverage that information for purchasing, which would give them something to leverage against the other shopping sites. Mind you, that doesn't mean their best shot has better than 50/50 odds. In fact, I'd peg them at closer to 20/80 and then only IF they get moving on it soon.

Re: "Facebook needs to get a direction "

If you regard the initial valuation as the "insider trading" it could be comparable. One of the reasons we have the current regulatory regime is to inhibit market manipulations from such insider trading. When we get under the rubic of clean and fair assessment from the regulator it is double bad.

Re: it does look like deliberate market manipulation with the blessing of the SEC.

Yep, which is why I would support a lawsuit from the shareholders.

Re: "con men at the top"

Investing in the stock market is a RISK, not a gamble. A risk can be hedged by proper planning, prior experience at launching new companies, and other things. Yes a new business that doesn't produce anything has a much higher risk than anything else that I can think of in the market. BUT, the people pricing and backing the offering still have a FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY to the investors who will buy the IPO and the company offering the IPO. I don't like roulette wheel lawsuits, but in this instance I would fully support IPO purchasers pursuing an obviously bungled offering. It is time to start holding the charlatans accountable. I might even be willing to grant some leeway for purchasers in the first week or two bringing similar suits, although much after that and I think we get beyond the bounds of common sense.

Re: Arab Spring?

Not quite. In this case it would be

"Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss."

Re: Here we go with that poor analogy again.

Yours is even worse.

All analogies fail at some point, but I'll try to improve on yours.

It's like having dropped off your clothes at the dry cleaners and the dry cleaner hung your bill on the backside of a window so only internal staff could see it. Only they missed a mirror on the back wall that no customer could read. And someone who was not a customer walked into the shop with a camera, took a picture of the mirror through the glass, developed the film, printed the picture, pilfered the details of your bill, and then posted it on the internet.

Even if the Beeb et al do that, it doesn't solve UKNova's fundamental problem: they don't have the money to defend themselves against the suit. Even a minimal IP case in the States will run you $20,000 if settled out of court and quickly. I don't imagine it would be any cheaper in the UK. What UKNova need is both explicit permission AND a defense fund. Although it might be worth them looking into organizing both.

Re: Are they claiming that not one episode of

I can't speak to UKNova from direct knowledge, but my own experience with groups walking the fine grey line of reproducing/reshowing things which are not commercially available in the region where they are being traded/shown is that IF the group makes a point of ONLY distributing copies of things which aren't commercially available they've made a philosophical decision that they are trying to promote the commercial sale of materials they want to see and it is in their best interests to make sure no such materials exist in whatever it is they are trying to promote. And since they've made that philosophical decision, they'll be more vigorous in enforcing it at their venue then any paid troll ever will. To the point of, when a release decision is announced, even if the group knows the announcement won't come to fruition for a year and has a 50/50 shot at never materializing, they will none the less immediately remove all related materials and prevent them from reappearing.

If they haven't made that philosophical decision, they won't make a point of publicizing it, and they won't give a rat's ass about what shows up on their site, including materials from companies that are known to strictly enforce their copyrights.

My experiences are on the American anime scene back when tape trading was the only practical means of distribution.

Re: Breaking news: Stores teach employees to sell stuff

There's a difference between teaching someone to sell, and teaching someone to use cult indoctrination techniques.

Re: Easy update?

If you know enough to separate your admin from your user account, I see no reason to remind you of that fact. If you don't know enough to switch the accounts, chances are you're already running in admin mode anyway. Sad but true.

Re: Apple didn't yet have that highly religious cult following back then.

Apple had a religious cult following that denied they were a religious cult following way back in 1992 (and probably before). That was about the time I moved to take my second real job and a coworker was constantly going on about how they didn't understand why people bought PCs because Apple gave more bang for the buck than PCs did.

Re: Copy copy copy. There's a pattern there.

I think it is as erroneous to say Apple just copies as it is to say they took a risk with iPhone and iPad. They do improve, and patents do and should be issued for actual technical advancements. But they also have a fanatical base. So, as long as you don't over-extend your manufacturing, you are guaranteed to make a profit. Likewise if a product turns out to be more popular than they expect, they can quickly ramp up manufacturing production.

What bothers me about this whole affair is how broad and ridiculous the claims are. I never really compared an iPhone and the Samsung until I saw an article yesterday with the two side by side. Honestly, I like the Samsung appearance better. It is more open and pleasing to my eye than the crowded iPhone. But regardless of which one you prefer, the two are obviously different while using an obvious layout.

Re: Not quite

As I recall from my language classes way back when, Anglo-Saxon is still the base from which English derives and what gives us the rare characteristic of not having genders for our nouns. Apparently Anglo and Saxon were close enough in pronunciation that if you dropped the gender article from the word you could understand each other. French is the largest romantic language contributor at about 40%, but there's plenty of German, Spanish, and Italian thrown in.

@Steve Pettifer: If you wanted to keep 'climate change' as a scientific term,

you needed to keep the Warmists out of it. Now that they've recognized that their lies about AGW have been exposed and seized on 'climate change' as their mantra, it's too late.